Conference Center Proposed on Rte. 29

Sutton and Utz said that although the county and Park Service have never had a problem working together, the designation would be a safeguard.

The county gave the same designation to Prince William Forest Park, 17,000 acres also operated by the Park Service, in 2004 through a Comprehensive Plan amendment, Utz said.

Just north of Haymarket, residents in the Longlevel neighborhoods are trying to preserve their open space. Longlevel Estates and Longlevel Acres were built about 28 years ago and are now squeezed between the large communities of Dominion Valley and Piedmont and are subject to similar development.

The Comprehensive Plan allows as many as four units to be built on one acre. According to the residents' application, houses in the neighborhoods are on 1.3 to 2.5 acres.

The residents want to keep it that way, said Michael Veness, president of the community's civic association. The zoning change would help the residents "try to preserve our neighborhood and large lots," he said.

Veness, 53, said he has lived in the neighborhood for 19 years and has watched growth clog Route 29.

"Traffic, traffic, traffic. It's difficult to commute to work. It's difficult to go to the store. It's difficult to go to the doctor," Veness said.

Utz said the Longlevel application is the most unusual of the 12 calling for residential zoning changes because "it's the only one that down-plans" instead of seeking permission to build more housing, he said.

Of the applications seeking to increase housing density, three have previously been proposed and were rejected or withdrawn last year. They are Avendale, a proposal to build 365 houses in Gainesville; River Oaks, 112 units in Woodbridge; and a project by developer Mark Granville-Smith.

Granville-Smith withdrew his proposal to build houses in the Rural Crescent -- in western and northern Prince William -- before the board voted last March. "I did that to have more discussion with citizens," he said.

Environmentalists and anti-sprawl advocates lobbied against the proposal. The crescent, created in 1998 to preserve land, limits construction to one house per 10 acres.

Granville-Smith is back again, proposing a bigger project that would take up 1,466 acres and call for building 650 houses on 2.5-acre lots in in Brentsville.

This time, Granville-Smith has the support of residents who own 786 acres of the land he wants to develop.

According to the application, the residents say their land was originally designated for semirural development, which means the 2.5-acre lots were allowed, until the county placed the land under the protection of the Rural Crescent.

Other proposed amendments include the development of 784 multifamily units near Innovation@Prince William technology park and a promise from the developer to give land for a potential Virginia Railway Express station and the development of 192 multifamily units at Liberia Avenue and Prince William Parkway.

Also, the American Legion wants to terminate a lease with the county's park authority, which rents 22 acres from the group for ball fields. The American Legion would like then to change the zoning to allow for as many as four houses per acre.